1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an examination reserve system for managing examination reserve requests for a medical imaging apparatus such as an X-ray diagnostic apparatus or X-ray CT apparatus (X-ray computed tomography apparatus), a maintenance service system for a medical imaging apparatus, a medical imaging apparatus, an examination reserve method, and a maintenance service method.
2. Description of the Related Art
When a failure occurs in a medical imaging apparatus such as an X-ray diagnostic apparatus or X-ray CT apparatus (X-ray computed tomography apparatus), examination operation is stopped until the cause of the failure is removed.
Upon reception of a notice of the occurrence of a failure, a maintenance service company dispatches a customer engineer as soon as possible. The dispatched customer engineer is required to check the operation state of each component of the apparatus and estimate the cause of the failure. The customer engineer is also required to cooperate with a user, a person in charge of repair, a person in charge of parts management, and the like and quickly make a repair schedule on the site, if possible.
When a repair schedule is determined, a person in charge of examination reserve management on the hospital side inputs, to an ordering system or examination reserve system, information required to stop the receipt of reserve requests for examinations that use the broken-down medical imaging apparatus until the apparatus recovers from the failure.
In addition, a person in charge in the hospital lists examination reserve requests that have been already receipted until the recovery time, and makes contact with physicians as order sources, patients to be examined, and the like so as to cancel the listed examination reserve requests.
As described above, once a failure occurs in a medical imaging apparatus, the person in charge becomes very busy with work other than routine work. In addition, if a person in charge of examination reserve management is notified of the occurrence of a failure with a delay, an erroneous examination reserve request may be receipted or the examination reserve request may not be canceled in time, resulting in reserving an examination. As a result, the person in charge becomes further busy in handling such problems.